TB Free England

Bovine TB (bTB) devastates thousands of farming family businesses every year and tens of thousands of cattle are culled annually in England because of it. Find out more about bTB, its impact, and why we must use all available options to make England TB free.

Vaccination won’t work on an animal that already has bovine TB, and no country in the world where wildlife carries the disease has eradicated it in cattle without tackling it in wildlife too.

Vaccination and cows

There are calls for cows to be vaccinated against bTB.

However there is no legal vaccine available. Currently the only option is the BCG vaccine (Mycobacterium bovis Bacille Calmette-Guérin – ref 1,2,3,4,5).

The problem is that at present it is impossible to distinguish between a BCG-vaccinated and TB-infected cow. And for this reason it is currently illegal under EU law to vaccinate cattle with the BCG jab.

Work is underway to devise a DIVA test (ref 6,7,8) - a test that can Differentiate between Infected and Vaccinated Animals. But even when this has been fully developed, it will need to go through EU and international approval.

On top of that, there's evidence to suggest that the BCG vaccine and DIVA test will not eradicate bovine TB on their own. A recent scientific study (10) concluded that the efficacy of the BCG vaccine in cattle was between 56% and 68%.

We know the BCG vaccination reduces the progression, severity and excretion of TB, resulting in reduced transmission between animals, but it is not perfect. And for any vaccine to eradicate a disease it is necessary to ensure that 80% of the target population are immunised. The current BCG vaccine just does not does not shape up.

In July 2017 Farming Minister George Eustice announced that the BEVS would restart in summer 2018 and applications for grants from groups interested in running projects would be accepted from late 2017.

The only vaccine currently available for use on badgers is in an injectable form – and that presents problems.

You need to cage-trap the badgers to vaccinate them. And you have to it annually for period of at least five years.

The process is costly and needs to be carried out by people who have been on accredited courses. Every trap has to be visited early in the morning, every day.

In May 2015, the report on the third year of the programme was published and showed that 1,316 badgers had been vaccinated at a total cost of £929,540, or approximately £706 per badger. During the second year of the programme 1,352 badgers were vaccinated at a total cost of £926,784, or approximately £685 per badger. The first year of the programme saw 1,424 badgers vaccinated at a total cost of around £943,000, or approximately £662 per jab.

There are also question marks over the efficacy of the vaccine.

It will not cure a sick badger, one which is already infected with TB.

The science suggests the vaccine is most effective in very young animals, and less so in older subjects (11). Young badgers spend their early weeks in the sett, making it impossible to trap and vaccinate them and putting them at risk of infection before they emerge.

There is also no evidence as yet which shows that vaccinating a proportion of the badger population actually results in a reduced risk to cattle.

An oral bait vaccine is likely to offer the most successful route forwards. But this option is still some years away from becoming a part of any badger control plan, because there is no licensed or proven oral vaccine currently available. The Government's TB eradication strategy for England suggests 2019 as the earliest when an oral badger TB vaccine may be deployed, subject to research breakthrough and authorisation.